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Contents

1 Introduction 1 Critical community psychology in Manchester 2 Why Manchester? 3 Learning through action and action through learning 5 Action learning 7 Action research 7 Language, discourse and representation 9 What do we mean by critical'? 12 Orientation to the book 13 PART I: THINK! 15 2 What is critical community psychology? 17 The nature and origins of community psychology 18 Definitions 21 The emergence of community psychology in different parts of the world 24 Key themes in critical community psychology 28 From prevention to liberation 29 Global trends and critical community psychology 30 Think global, act local? 32 Localism as a philosophy 32 Sharing experiences, strategies and programmes 33 Being part of a wider movement 33 The role of social movements 34 Social justice and a just society 35 Core values underpinning a critical community psychology 36 Social justice 37 Stewardship 38 Community 38 Conclusion 39 3 Core elements of a critical community psychology 41 Elements of critical community psychology 42 The ecological metaphor 42 Adaptation 44 Cycling of resources 44 Interdependence 44 Succession 44 Unintended consequences 45 Non-linearity 45 Fields and edges 46 Nesting 46 Ecological design 47 The systems perspective 47 Multiple levels of analysis 48 The person-in-context 49 An ontology of individual and society 50 The person-situation formula 50 Person-situation level elements of analysis 51 Role-rule contexts 51 Group dynamics 52 Leadership 53 Community-society level elements of analysis 54 Society and the individual 55 Facing the nature of oppression and liberation, immersion in the lived experiences of people oppressed by the social system 56 A dialectical relationship between people and systems: conscientisation 58 Working together 59 Interdisciplinarity 59 Agency, power and collective action 59 Participation 59 Prefigurative action 60 Core principles underlying a critical community psychology 62 Diversity 62 Innovation 62 Liberation 63 Commitment 63 Critical reflection 63 Humility 63 Conclusions 67 4 The contested nature of community 69 What is community? 71 Theory descriptions of community 73 Dimensions of community: Sentiment, social structure and space 74 Sentiment 74 Psychological sense of community 75 The cultural and symbolic sense of community 76 Space 79 Social structure 81 Multi-dimensional communities 83 Power and community 84 Social exclusion 85 Conclusions 87 5 Community as social ties 89 Social ties 90 Affection 91 Interdependence 91 Coercion 92 Theory prescriptions for community 93 Ties of affection and co-operation: Community as social capital 94 Ties of coercion: Community as ghetto 98 The ghetto walls 100 Social boundaries: benign or benevolent? 102 Community and social policy 103 Nature of participation 104 Conclusion 110 Critical disruption of Think! 111 Critically disrupting the challenge to individualism 111 Critically disrupting our history of community psychology 113 Resources for Part One 117 PART II: ACT! 121 6 Problem definition 123 Social issues 125 Need 126 Positionality and problem definition 130 Whose need? 131 Getting to know the community 132 Community audit 132 Community profiling 133 Use of statistics 137 Observation 137 Community walks 138 Making contact and gaining entry in the community 139 Problem situations as human systems 141 Stakeholders and stakeholder analyses 151 Conclusion 153 7 Action planning 155 Decision making 156 Stakeholder analysis and action planning 160 Boundary critique: towards value-based decision making 161 Fourth generation evaluation 168 Participatory appraisal of needs and development of action 169 Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats 170 Force fi eld analysis 171 Option appraisal 174 Compromise 175 Visioning 176 Mixing methods 178 Complex decision making: Polarity management 179 8 Action 1: furtherance of critical consciousness and creation of new forms of social settings 183 Action for change 184 Strategies of critical community psychological action 186 Furtherance of critical consciousness (conscientisation) 186 Problematisation 188 Experiential learning 191 Capacitation' 195 Deideologisation 197 Creation of new forms of social relations and settings 198 Multi-dimensional nature of social situations 198 Behaviour settings 200 New or alternative social settings 202 The radical nature of alternative social settings 206 9 Action 2: Development of alliances, and accompaniment, advocacy and analysis of policy 209 Making links, the development of alliances and counter systems 210 Processes of making links and working together 210 Communities of interest or communities of practice 213 Alliances and coalitions 213 Partnerships 216 Working at the ecological edge 217 Alliances, new social settings and connecting with social movements 222 Accompaniment, advocacy and analysis of policy 224 Accompaniment 224 Skills needed for accompaniment 227 Knowledge and accompaniment 228 Advocacy 228 Analysis of policy 234 Policy implementation 236 Policy analysis 237 Conclusions 240 Critical disruption of Act! 241 Chronic uncertainty 242 Work ethic 243 Resources for Part Two 245 PART III: REFLECT! 249 10 Evaluation 251 Purpose of evaluation 252 Principles of evaluation 253 Evaluation frameworks 255 Politics of evaluation 256 What is to be evaluated? 261 Theory of change' perspectives on evaluation 262 Realistic or realist perspectives on evaluation 263 Capacity building for evaluation 268 Participation and evaluation 270 Participation and empowerment in evaluation 271 Resistance to involvement as a barrier to participation in evaluation 274 Skills for evaluation 276 Conclusions 278 11 Change, influence and power 279 The nature of social change 280 Incremental or radical change 283 Linear and non-linear change 284 Stage approaches to change 285 Strategic change 286 Resistance to change 287 Action research as change 290 Social movements, power and ideology 291 Social influence 292 Social change tactics 294 Social power, powerlessness and empowerment 294 Taxonomy of power 295 The social structure of social power 298 Power analysis 300 12 Roles, skills and reflections on learning for community psychologists 303 Roles for facilitating change 304 Facilitation roles 304 Educational roles 304 Representational roles 305 Technical roles 306 Skills for facilitating change 307 Interpersonal communication skills 308 Social problem solving skills 308 Organisation skills 309 Research skills 309 The context of community psychological action 310 Reflexivity as part of practice 314 Constraints on working as a community psychologist and spaces for resistance 316 Ethical issues 319 Risk 320 Power (again) 322 Prefigurative learning 323 The case for and against community psychology 323 Community psychology as oppression or liberation 325 Conclusion 327 Critical disruption of Reflect! 329 Evaluation and the audit culture 329 Auditing skills 331 Critical disruption of critical reflection 333 Resources for Part Three 335 13 Critical disruption: Does critical community psychology have an adequate praxis? 337 A new context: extreme and globalised oppression 340 Rethinking the amelioration-transformation distinction 341 References 343 Index 369

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